I said I’d spent eighteen years building operational systems for a family freight coordination company, had been part of a succession transition that reorganized my role out of the company, and was looking for a position where operations leadership had clear scope and support.
He asked one question: “Was the departure your decision?”
I said it wasn’t, and then I said the thing I’d practiced: “I think the transition surfaced some assumptions about the relative value of sales versus operations that I’d been living with for a long time. My decision now is what to do with that understanding.”
He nodded. Not a nodding-along nod. The kind where someone is actually filing a thing.
There were two more rounds. A panel interview with two of Owen’s colleagues — one operations, one client relations. A case exercise that involved a mock exception scenario with a fictional client portfolio, which I handled with the particular ease of someone who has done the actual thing. They gave me a client request, a carrier conflict, and a deadline. I worked through it in twenty-two minutes, documented my decisions, and identified two protocol improvements for next time.
The operations colleague said, afterward, that I’d flagged an issue in the mock exercise that none of the other candidates had caught. I didn’t ask what the issue was. I had my own read of what mattered and I’d noted it.
Owen called with an offer in mid-November. Sixty-eight thousand annually, a benefits package, a team of five operations coordinators I’d help develop, and a clear reporting line directly to him.